Tesla Energy, Brookfield, & Dacra Are Developing A Large-Scale Sustainable Neighborhood In Austin, Texas
Tesla Energy, Brookfield Asset Management, and Dacra are teaming up to create SunHouse at Easton Park, Brookfield announced. This is the first Tesla Solar neighborhood and will be the nation’s most sustainable residential community, according to the companies. Brookfield and Dacra are combining their real estate experience with Tesla Energy’s products and wisdom to create a unique neighborhood that I think could be the first of many more to come.
Brookfield noted that Tesla’s V3 solar roof tiles and Powerwall 2 battery storage system will be installed in phases at homes in the SunHouse community that will be developed on land in Brookfield Residential’s Easton Park. The first phase of installation started last month with a sampling of homes under construction.
These installations will provide insight and information on product integration and will guide the installation at the next phase. The master-planned community of homes will be the final phase of the process. The goal is to establish an energy-neutral, sustainable community and a model for the design and construction of sustainable large-scale housing projects around the world.
Tesla Solar will provide ongoing oversight of the homes’ energy systems. Brookfield’s renewable power business will integrate a community-wide solar program that will serve broader public use needs and those of surrounding neighborhoods. Brookfield Residential noted that it will also incorporate a suite of technology features that include EV charging stations in each home and throughout the community.
Residents of these new homes will most likely produce enough energy to supply their daily needs while reducing daily demand on the electric grid. They will be provided with backup storage in the event of a power outage and may possibly be compensated for returning power to the energy grid.
Statements From The CEOs
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, said:
“Neighborhood solar installations across all housing types will reshape how people live. Brookfield and Dacra’s commitment to stay at the vanguard of that evolution is what makes them the right collaborator for Tesla Energy. The feedback we get from the solar and battery products used in this community will impact how we develop and launch new products.”
Brian Kingston, the CEO of Brookfield’s real estate business, shared how this would help Brookfield meet the demand for environmentally responsible communities of the future.
“This initiative brings together multiple parts of our organization with innovative and forward-thinking partners that share a commitment to advance the development of sustainable communities.
“As consumers increasingly seek out energy security alongside sustainable places to live, combining Tesla’s solar technology together with Brookfield’s real estate and renewables development capabilities will help us meet demand for environmentally responsible communities of the future.”
Craig Robins, CEO of Dacra, spoke of the overall goal that’s the best for everyone:
“Our goal is to establish that fully-sustainable neighborhoods are not only viable, but the best practical and economical choice.
“Together with Brookfield and Tesla, we are trying to change the world by creating technology-driven, energy independent communities that make the world a better place.”
The City of Austin and Travis County have both committed to sustainable development. Brookfield stated that it will work with Dacra and Tesla “over the next year to incorporate additional transportation, technology, and energy solutions to create this new paradigm for residential community development.”
“The City of Austin is excited for the arrival of these affordable options to housing powered by renewable energy,” Mayor Steve Adler of Austin said. “I am excited for the Tesla, Brookfield, and Dacra partnership’s approach to sustainable energy and housing as an example of the out-of-box thinking that continues to make our community a beacon of innovation for the rest of the country and world.”
This is exciting and I think it can be a blueprint for all housing types, whether for those who are buying homes or developers who rent out apartments. I really think that this could also benefit low-income housing as well. However, there will be several challenges in this regard. To me, owning a home is a luxury, and sadly, many others are in the same boat.
MarketWatch reported that many who buy houses are using their portfolios to do so — not their salaries. The article noted that the housing market is increasingly unequal and that it could be accompanying a K-shaped recovery from the Covid-induced downturn. Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, touched upon how the pandemic widened the gap between those who have and those who don’t. “When I started in this business, there was a broad consensus around making the American dream accessible to middle- and lower-income people. After this year I now see housing as a luxury good.”
I’ve also seen numerous posts on TikTok from both Millennials and Gen Z-ers saying that owning a home is no longer the American dream, but a luxury for very few. And the idea of owning a smart home or a clean energy home is even more of a luxury.
Tesla can change this — and most likely will in the coming decade. I think that once these initial homes in the SunHouse community are all bought and functioning, all three of the companies can plan the next one, and as with Tesla’s Master Plan that Elon shared ages ago, this can transform from luxury to a product that more people will eventually be able to afford.
It’s a great start and I’m excited to see how Tesla can revolutionize the housing industry as it has done with the automotive, energy, and others.
What looks to be Tesla’s long-rumored “more affordable model” has been spotted testing on a highway, without any camouflage. But before you get too excited, it’s just a Model Y with some cheaper parts – and a price that’s not much different than we’ve seen on other Teslas.
For many years, Tesla had planned to build a much more affordable vehicle, starting around $25k. This vehicle was nicknamed the “Model 2,” and would have offered the most affordable entry point into the EV market, at least in the West.
But that project was abruptly canceled by Tesla CEO Elon Musk as first reported by Reuters and immediately denied by Musk. Reuters was later shown to be correct in its report, as many who follow Tesla might have expected, given Musk’s constant overpromising (and often outright lies).
In its place, Tesla started offering vague promises about “more affordable models,” starting in its Q1 report in April 2024. Tesla later specified that these would enter production in the first half of 2025.
The language Tesla used suggested that the cheaper vehicles would be new models, which means more than one model, and not just based on a current Tesla model. But we reported that this was unlikely to be the case, and that the new models would just be a stripped-down Model Y.
The first-half deadline Tesla set came and went, but on Tesla’s Q2 call, it said that “first builds” were produced in June. On the same call, Musk said that the “new affordable model” is… the Model Y.
We first saw the “more affordable” Model Y out and about in Chinese spy shots, which included exterior videos and even a peek at the interior. However, in those spy shots, the front and rear of the vehicle were covered with camouflage, suggesting that there would be some changes in those areas Tesla didn’t want to leak yet.
Tesla doesn’t seem to mind those leaks anymore (especially after a low-res website leak), as a Model Y was spotted driving on the highway with no camouflage whatsoever, offering a look into what Tesla was hiding underneath those covers.
The pictures were posted to reddit by Fantastic_Train_7270, and show a Model Y with Florida manufacturer plates.
The nicely clear front end photos show that the car is missing the front light bar that was added with the Juniper refresh, instead reverting to separate headlights – though both are quite narrow, like the headlights on the Juniper.
The rear end is also missing its light bar, instead replaced by a horizontal black line. The line does not have the “T E S L A” badging, as the Juniper refresh has.
The model also has new aerodynamic wheels, which should help add a little range (and may make up for a smaller battery pack, though we don’t have information yet on whether battery size is part of the decontenting associated with the “more affordable” model).
Other than the lack of light bars, the front and rear look quite similar to the Juniper refresh. However, one concerning detail is that the rear trunk lid does not seem to fit snugly into the place it’s supposed to fit, instead encroaching onto the top of the plastic rear fascia.
We don’t know what might have caused this, but we do know that we’ve seen Model Ys with poor color matching on body panels before – but that’s a lot less of a problem than a body panel that seems to be misaligned by the better part of an inch, visible from a longish distance shot on a highway.
Of course, it’s just a prototype, but this is also the reason prototypes have camouflage, so the public can’t see fiddly bits like this ahead of release.
While these photos don’t show us anything of the interior, information from a recent software update gives us some hints as to what has been removed. In addition to removing the glass roof, coat hooks and 8″ rear screen (as could be seen in the Chinese spy shots), the software update suggests that the Model Y will have no ambient LED lights, single-axis seat controls, and simpler air vents.
The fact that this vehicle was spotted without camouflage, alongside the fact that this vehicle has shown up in recent software updates, suggests that release may be imminent. We had expected that it might be released in China first as has been the case with some other Tesla models lately, but the vehicle’s presence on US roads means that it might see a release here soon too.
And if it is releasing soon, it would be at an important time. Tesla just had its first positive sales quarter in some time, but that was primarily due to the expiration of the $7,500 US EV tax credit, which pulled forward demand. That means Teslas are now going to be $7,500 more expensive for US buyers, as of yesterday. So anything Tesla can do to cut prices will be a big deal.
We don’t know for certain how much cheaper the “more affordable” Model Y will be, but estimates (and a leak) suggest a base price of $40k – so, a savings of $5k over the current $45k base price, or $2,500 under the current base price of the Model 3, neither of which are as low as the lowest prices we’ve seen Teslas sell for before. Quite a far shout from the actually affordable $25,000 car we were all promised for so long.
Also, that price would still be a $2,500 price increase compared to the deal which was available just two days ago, before tax credit expiry. And Tesla has its own CEO to thank for that price hike, given he unwisely spent $200 million campaigning for the anti-EV forces that are now making his company’s products less affordable.
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On today’s surprising episode of Quick Charge, Tesla had its first good sales quarter in a while as the EV tax credit expiration spiked demand, but a number of big shareholders still want Elon gone! Press play to find out why!
We’re also highlighting new EV deals from BMW and Jeep – but it’s not all rosy news for Stellantis’ EV fans. The eagerly anticipated, ultra-fast Banshee edition may never see the light of day.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Climate XChange, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to help states pass effective, equitable climate policies. The nonprofit just kicked off its 10th annual EV raffle, where participants have multiple opportunities to win their dream EV.
Visit CarbonRaffle.org/Electrek to learn more!
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Environment
OpenAI’s Sora 2 is putting safety and censorship to the test with stunningly real videos
Fresh off a $6.6 billion share sale that made it the world’s most valuable private company, OpenAI’s TikTok-style video app, powered by its new artificial intelligence model, Sora 2, is going viral.
Despite the gated release that requires an invite code, the video creation tool has already shot to the number three spot on Apple‘s App Store and sparked a wave of deepfakes, including a viral clip of CEO Sam Altman shoplifting GPUs.
Internally, the rollout has reignited a long-running debate inside OpenAI about how to balance safety with creative freedom.
A person familiar with internal strategy at the company said leadership views strict guardrails as essential, but also worries about stifling creativity or being perceived as censoring too much.
That tension remains unresolved.
OpenAI’s culture has long favored speed, often shipping new tools ahead of rivals and letting the public adapt in real time.
One former employee, who asked not to be named to discuss internal matters, told CNBC that during their tenure, OpenAI leadership had a pattern of prioritizing fast launches. That strategy was on full display after China’s DeepSeek released a powerful model at the end of last year that was cheaper and faster to build than anything out of Silicon Valley.
OpenAI responded within weeks, debuting two new models in what was widely viewed as a defensive move to preserve its lead.
But OpenAI has a key advantage: Its growing institutional muscle.
Once a scrappy research lab in San Francisco’s Mission District, the company has since become more structured, enabling it to spin up cross-functional teams more quickly and accelerate the development and deployment cycles for products like Sora.
OpenAI said Sora includes multiple layers of safeguards meant to prevent unsafe content from being generated, using prompt filtering and output moderation across video frames and audio transcripts. It bans explicit content, terrorist propaganda, and material promoting self-harm. The app also uses watermarks and bans likeness impersonation.
But some users have already found ways to skirt those protections.
Sora 2, the AI model powering OpenAI’s app, is a sharp improvement over the first version. The new system generates longer, more coherent clips that look strikingly real.
Multiple viral videos feature Altman after he granted permission for his likeness to be used on the platform, while others depict popular cartoon characters like Pikachu and SpongeBob SquarePants in unsettling roles.
The content has fueled criticism that OpenAI is once again moving faster than its own guardrails. Its use of copyrighted material — unless rights holders opt out — is consistent with the company’s current policy, though that approach is being challenged in court.
Altman has brushed off concerns, saying in a post on X that Sora is as much about transparency — showing the public what the technology can do — as it is about building commercial momentum to fund OpenAI’s broader ambitions around artificial general intelligence.
The launch comes amid intensifying competition. Meta rolled out Vibes last week, a new short-form AI video feed inside its Meta AI app. Google has Veo 3, while ByteDance and Alibaba have also debuted rival systems.
OpenAI, meanwhile, just committed to fresh spending of $850 billion, deepening its push into infrastructure and next-gen models.
Experts say the push into video isn’t just about drawing more users into the ecosystem with another sticky consumer app.
Professor Hao Li, a leading expert in video synthesis, told CNBC that most AI systems today are still trained on linguistic data like books and internet text. But to move toward general intelligence, he said, models need to learn from visual and audio information, much like a baby discovers the world through sight.
“We use AI to generate content to then train another model to perform better,” he said.
Li added that his lab already uses AI-generated video to enhance model performance, feeding synthetic data back into the system.
It’s part of a broader trend among researchers who see video generation as a way to simulate reality and help models reason more like humans.
Former OpenAI executive Zack Kass, whose forthcoming book “The Next Renaissance: AI and the Expansion of Human Potential” explores the societal implications of artificial intelligence, echoed that view.
On the broader question of how model makers should approach deployment, Kass argued that the trade-offs of releasing powerful technology early are worth it.
“There are two alternatives to building in the open: Not building at all, or building privately. And those alternatives, to me, are worse,” he told CNBC. “If we have a groundbreaking technology, I think people should know about it and use it so that we can all update to it.”
WATCH: OpenAI cements status as the world’s most valuable private company
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